


Ugly and Crooked

by Mersheeple



Series: Hearts&Cauldrons Prompts [52]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-War, Severus Snape Lives, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25657915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mersheeple/pseuds/Mersheeple
Summary: It was ugly and crooked and crumbling. The villagers wanted it destroyed...until they came along...
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Series: Hearts&Cauldrons Prompts [52]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805746
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63
Collections: Hearts and Cauldrons - Daily Prompts!, Hearts and Cauldrons Discord Members, Severus Snape Lives!





	Ugly and Crooked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thecrazybgilr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thecrazybgilr/gifts).



> Last short for the night...Thought I'd go with something a little fluffy...

The house was crooked. It was old and ugly and strange and weird. The woman who had lived there before did not look after it. It was a blight on the village and they wanted to see it torn down.

It was old and crumbling when they first saw it. The thatched roof was tattered and there were many patched areas that they had giggled over together. The plaster on the outside walls was falling off in chunks and hideously yellowed in other patches. The window frames were rotten and would all need replacing, and the door was hanging off its hinges. And as for the garden, well, it was an overgrown jungle with so many brambles that they could not even see all of it.

All in all, it was perfect.

They hadn’t even needed to negotiate on price. They had loved it instantly and had paid the full amount as soon as they had heard it. Of course, the damage to the property meant that they couldn’t move in straight away so they stayed in his little house in Spinner’s End during the week and the little nearby Bed and Breakfast at the weekends while they worked on the innards of the house.

It took six weeks to get it cleared enough inside to have builders to come and look at it. They even got a Thatcher in to look at the roof. The garden, of course, was to be Severus’s domain so no one was coming in to see to that.

The thatcher, a young man called Aidan who owned his own business, would take two weeks to finish the work to his satisfaction. They were impressed that he would not be taking the faster route of just patching up what was already there. They were happy to pay him for the work, partial payment up front, subsequent payment on completion.

The builders had taken longer to give them a quote but had eventually, with much cajoling from Hermione and one pointed glare from Severus, had given them a quote that worked for them.

It had taken them almost two years to get the cottage the way they wanted it. The walls outside were clean, painted cream rather than white, and smoothed over. The window frames were replaced, in-keeping with the time period but double-glazed thanks to special permission from the local authorities. The door had been replaced with a plain wooden door with a stained glass window, a panel that appeared to be a snake entwined around a rose.

But the garden? Oh the garden was _magical_. All the locals thought so. There was a white blossomed tree that bore the sweetest fruit. There was no discussing of what the fruit was because it didn’t look or taste like anything they had ever tasted before. There were plants that seemed to move in a breeze that didn’t exist. There were flowers that seemed to glisten and glow, long after the last of the dew had gone. There were berries and grasses and fruits and flowers that had never been seen before.

That little garden and the little cottage attached to it became home to the Snapes. And no one cared if they were a little weird, or unusual, or strange.


End file.
